May 30, 2006

The sleeves, of course, were a new attempt to combine the shaping of a nice inset sleeve cap with top-down construction. The short rows at the top eventually joined up.

Honestly, I probably picked up a few too many stitches for the sleeves... and, actually, made the armscyes a bit too deep. They're not bad, just a bit roomier at the armpit than they need to be. But since they're not roomy to an uncomfortable degree, I'm not worrying about them. I should also note that the sleeves end just below the elbow, a choice made largely because I was worried about running out of yarn. But it's also cute. (Yes, too, the sweater's a bit cropped, a choice made because I know cotton tends to grow a little after washing. We'll see if that happens. Either way, I'm fine with the end result.)

When I got done with them, I realized something else. Well, two things. I'd forgotten about one of the buttonholes. D'oh! And, anyway, the sweater was a touch tight across the bust, and therefore could use an edging that added just a tiny bit of width.

What to do? I thought about crocheted edgings, but was unenthusiastic about that. Then, wandering around the knitty board, I came across a thread on i-cord bindoff, aka applied i-cord. Aha! I thought!

Applied i-cord it was. That involved picking up stitches all the way around the cardigan front and neck edges (A ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS, for what it's worth... in the future, I'll plan for this as a finishing technique and try to make a better selvedge [edge] for picking up stitches), starting a three-stitch i-cord (for those who don't do knitting, it's basically a tiny, tiny tube [or, really, spiral, as is all circular knitting] knit over a small number of stitches), and then knitting it on to those picked up stitches all along the edge. For button holes, I did a couple of regular i-cord rounds, and then picked up again.

So cool!

Anyway. It's in reasonably good shape now. I need to wash and block it, a process that frankly has me a bit nervous, for some reason. It's the cotton. I've had very little problem ever washing wool, or woven cotton, but cotton knits... well, sometimes the go weird on me. Wish me luck!

May 26, 2006

I hadn't worked on this cardigan for a while. Well, for a week. Because I forgot it at L's place two Wednesdays ago. But it's coming along nicely, at this point.

When I got to the length I wanted before starting the sleeves, I started knitting just the back, shaping the armscyes gently, but enough to make it a real set-in sleeve, neither a raglan nor a straight down sleeve. As I look at it now, I might have been a bit too enthusiastic in my initial decreases, but I think it'll end up OK.

So I knit the back, then each side of the front, using a three needle bind-off for the shoulder seams. I didn't bother with making them slightly graded, because, really, they ended up only like 14 stitches long, so I figured it didn't necessarily matter.

And, as you can probably see, I did a v-neck. In retrospect, I'm not sure about that. But, basically, I think I'll like it. And if I'd done something else, I'd have had to do some short row shaping for the bust, because it fits just about perfectly, in a very fitted way, now, but would be too tight there to button up.

This is the big experiment. Now, I could have started the sleeves from the cuff, and figured out the sleeve cap shaping with math. It's not that I shy away from math, but I thought there might be a more intuitive way to do this.

So I picked up nine stitches at the top of the armhole, and started knitting back and forth, picking up a couple more stitches at the end of each row, and then picking up just one more stitch at the end of each row towards the bottom, where the armhole is more strongly shaped. When I got to the flat bit at the bottom of the armhole, I picked up all the remaining stitches and joined the round.

I think it worked. Although it's not entirely even at the moment, I don't think there's any unevenness that will remain after a good blocking (even though this is cotton and thus not super blocking oriented). Also, because of the occasional weirdnesses of the edge because of the chevron patterning, the picked up stitch line isn't always the neatest thing ever. I'm hoping that the slubbiness of the yarn will hep cover that up.

May 02, 2006

Even though I haven't been writing about it much, I have made progress on my three current knitting projects. Only three, incidentally! My Koigu sock is coming along nicely, and goes with me pretty much wherever. I think my band conductor may have been annoyed with me last night for knitting during pauses in rehearsal, but, honestly, band's been annoying me, so this keeps me sane.

And I'm almost done with the third chart of the Orenburg shawl, depending on how you look at it. I'm about to have to start to think hard about it.

And I've had progress in the organic cotton (which is a phrase I'm betting MBSE is grinding her teeth over) cardigan, too. Even progress worth picturing.

The chevron pattern is coming along nicely. I like it because it's basically just stockinette, chopped up a little. It results in a fabric that I think makes good use of the slightly irregular yarn. You can see it, and the pattern kind of emphasizes it without getting obscured by it.

Anyway, I've decreased a little at the sides for some shaping. I might do one more decrease, but I'm not quite sure. I should probably put it on longer needles to see just how wide it is before I make that decision. And although I've got a bit more time before I really have to deal with them, I'm going to have to make some sleeve and neckline decisions sooner than later.

April 21, 2006

A while back, I bought some organic cotton, thinking I'd make a nice summery cardigan out of it for cool nights. Since it's been almost more summery than springy here recently, it seemed like time to play around with it.

It's a nice, very soft, thick and thin cotton with some texture to it, but not a ton. Most of the texture comes from the variations in thickness. That means that something mostly stockinette seems like the best idea, because any textured stitch is going to get a little lost in the slubbiness of it. I don't, though, want to do an all stockinette cardigan, because it's kind of boring. So, what to do?

Well, borrow elements of a pattern. I've been seeing these socks mentioned all over the place in knitting web land. They're cool, and I may well try them sooner than later. But for the moment, I'm trying to use a modified version of the chevron pattern for the cardigan.

And so, here we go. I tried a couple of different stitch counts, thinking I'd make the vs either wider or narrower, but I think I like this best. It also works out to 12 points around, which is nice for dividing into back and sides. Yes, the bottom edge will be pointy. No, I'm not sure if I'll like that. We'll see. I'm going to try to do a bit of shaping, too, when I get a bit further along.

Anyway, it's worth a try.

In other knitting news, here was the Koigu lace sock. I'd decided to put the live stitches on yarn and go back to tackle the afterthought heel now, using yarn from the other end of the skein, so I can eventually just knit the whole thing until it's done.

Except that now, much of it looks like this.

Picking up the heel stitches meant that I could try the sock on. And it's too tight. The foot's just fine, but as I started up the cuff, I decided to do the lace panel up the back, too. And that's made it all a bit too tight.

Ah, well. What's a project without some frogging.

This picture makes me think of a story... a book first, I think, then an animated short called The Dot and the Line. It's the story of a line in love with a dot in love with a squiggle. And some kind soul has uploaded the short to YouTube. It's not the greatest quality, but stick through with it to the moral of the story. It's punny. And the whole thing's kind of brilliant.